Hey again, I've had this written for awhile but I only just got around to editing it so I'm very sorry for the delay!

I hope you guys are ready for some travels!

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Bleach or any of its characters.

Well lets get into it!-

Wind howled, whipping the tent around me into a frenzy. The cloth did little to keep out the bitter cold that we had ventured into a few days ago, and the shivering was now apart of my very bones.

My fellow travelers hardly seemed to notice the change in climate. Ryley and Cuyler even stopping for a swim through a billowing stream. They had emerged shivering and slightly blue but smiling.

When leaving the city, I was slightly startled by the people who would accompany us Northward. Most of Luca's companions had been slaughtered by Bronze and her rebellion, and though I had never known him to be a fearful man, Cuyler had come with his own small army in preparation of ambush. And so our travelling party consisted of eighteen soldiers, three cooks and two young women who always hurried into my tent early morning to snag the clothes I had discarded the night before. A group large enough to draw attention, stomping feet that could be heard from the next mountain top.

Luckily, we stopped only once or twice a day before setting camp for the night; more if Ryley walked outside the carriage with me, for he grew tired more quickly. I felt exposed so out in the open, with my fathers golden carriage and soldiers armed as if guarding a great treasure, we were a shining beacon for trouble.

And even now, in the darkness of my private tent, I still thought I could feel hidden eyes. Hear silent threats in the whistling wind.

I rolled onto my back, clenching and unclenching my fists, fingers popping. I was unable to close my eyes for more than a few minutes at a time, before the howl of a wolf or a murmur from a watching guard brought me back into consciousness.

And so that continued, until the sun broke free from the mountains around us and turned my tent into one filled with honey coated light. I sat up slowly, my body heavy and aching. I blinked once, twice, and let them rest even longer the third time, before breathing deep and rising to dress.

Only minutes later, I thought I resembled something close enough to human again. Snapping back the flap door, I was struck nearly blind, and when my eyes adjusted to the suddenness of daylight, I found my way to the rising fire in the center of our camp.

Two of the men shot up from their log closest to the fire and motioned for me to fill their vacancy. I could not tell if it was respect or fear that brought the politeness out of them, and with the chilling cold I wasn't going to dwell on it.

Cuyler peered at me over the fire, "You look frozen to the bone."

I resisted the urge to sniffle, "It is an adjustment."

He gave me a close lipped smile, and tossed a bottle through the air between us. I studied the bottle of whiskey and frowned and Cuyler chuckled, "It tastes worse than death but it'll keep you warm."

I stared at the bottle a moment longer, and then tossed it back to him, "I'll do well enough without it," I needed to keep a clear and stable mind.

"Suit yourself," Cuyler shrugged, taking a swig of the auborn liquid.

"I'll take some," Ryley said from his brothers right, extending a hand out.

Cuyler moved the bottle out of his reach, "I don't think so baby brother. I swore never again after the last time," He looked back to me, "Poor little guy could barely keep the organs in his body from shooting out along with his dinner."

"That was an isolated incident. I'd had something bad to eat."

"Ruined Aunt Liliths dress is what you did. And it was my hide that took the beating for it." My eyes shifted across frosted ground to where their father stood by the creek, his cloak snapping around him in the breeze.

"Well, you were the one sneaking liquor,"

"Liquor that I shared with you like a good brother, and you had to go and get us discovered. Now, I'll never share with you again- besides you're too young."

Ryley threw his hands up, extending one in my direction, "You just offered some to Orihime, we are the same age you buffoon."

Cuyler glanced over, wide eyed, as if only just now realizing my true age, I gave him a confirmation shrug of a shoulder. Cuyler was nearly ten years my senior, and yet he had always considered me his equal, by age and otherwise. He shook off his shock, "Orihime's a Goldie, our laws don't apply to her." We did not have a legal drinking age within the city, or if we did I had never heard of it being enforced, but in the North you must be twenty-five. My father had told me it was so the alcohol did not deplete so quickly; and because the adults did not want to share the warming liquid. "Plus, Orihime has earned her right to a drink. So there." Cuyler flicked Ryley between the eyes, a secure 'end of discussion' gesture.

We packed up quickly after breakfast and we were hours already on the road before the sun settled in the sky.

It was a day where Ryley had the energy to walk with me- or perhaps it was still the slumbering irritation at his brother that kept him from the carriage. Regardless of why, I welcomed the company.

"Do you remember much about the North?" He asked me, pausing briefly to pick up a few pebbles from beneath our feet.

The air burned my throat as I breathed in enough to say, "Honestly, no. I had been- preoccupied."

Ryley nodded, tossing a small pebble far ahead, "You know, I don't really remember a lot about that time either; when we met all those years ago. Just the broken bits and my father and Cuyler chastising me for allowing a girl to over power me."

I would have laughed if I'd had the breath, "Cuyler did not know any better then, I'm hoping he does now."

"Oh believe me, he knows."

There was a clipped note of something in his voice, and when he threw his next stone it went far longer. And so I said, "How is your mother?"

He perked up like a small pup, "Doing well, if her last letter is to be believed. But she does not do well when any of us are away. When Cuyler was off to war, she hardly left her bed, hardly ate much of anything. So I will be more at peace once I see her."

I wondered how someone would normally respond, if it would be with more questions or casual reassurance. I wondered how I myself would have liked to be comforted in such matters and came up blank. I had no experience in the world that is having a mother. "I'm sure she will not be happy to see me," Ryley glanced at me from under his thick lashes, "I have stolen away her youngest son. And soon her eldest too, once the drums of war begin to beat."

"Culyer would follow that beating with or without you, he has always been a brute. And as for me, well, she will see the good our union will bring to the North. She will come to understand." Ryley picked up my thickly gloved hand and wound my arm through his. The warmth of his body nearly brought me to my knees and I found myself leaning into that heat.

Even when his words lodged themselves in my throat.

"Brandt and Garth are really the ones you should be worried about. I'm hoping these past weeks were long enough for them to knock the chips from their shoulders."

I laughed, opening my palm before him, and he dropped a few of his rocks into my waiting hand, "I suppose, but that hostility will be directed at you, so I really have nothing to fear."

"Besides your husbands well being," He joked.

"Yes, though, I should get myself used to that, don't you agree?"

Ryley sucked on his teeth with a chuckle, his breath coming out foggy. Then he clenched my arm a little tighter and spoke slower, quieter, "Would you have been happier? If it had been one of them?"

A face flashed in my mind and I banished it immediately, "No." He looked sideways at me, appearing as vulnerable as his question painted him, "I am glad it was you, glad it was someone who could look at me the way you do. Without seeing me for who- what I was during the war."

Brandt and Garth, and even Cuyler too, they had a picture of who I am in their minds. A picture of one of the many masks I'd been forced to wear. And while my heart did not flutter in Ryley's presence, it was a comfort to simply be in that presence; with no masks, no agendas, if only for a few hours at a time.

He was smiling, broad as the mountains, and I was even more glad I was able to finally give him an answer he had wanted.

In the North the sun seemed to only stay in the sky for a few hours, before disappearing over the horizon. And once its barely there warmth was stripped away, the entire world felt like it was freezing over. My skin, like glass, felt to be easily shattered. Even a brush of fabric was enough to make me want to scream. But nothing, nothing, compared the the sharp knife that stabbed my insides with every breath.

I had never known such cold- perhaps blocking it out from my last journey here. Even still, I did not want to slow my party, did not want to be the weakest in the pack, and so I did not mention the feeling of death sweeping in over my flesh.

And it was roughly four hours we travelled without sunlight, all of the others seeming to know their way home, even in the dark. I nearly sobbed outright when Cuyler peeked his head out the carriage door and said we should stop to make camp for the night.

Right from the moment the fire was struck, I was curled beside it, engulfed in the thickest furs I could find.

The men around me sang as they ate, the ale soon over taking their breath. I turned to Ryley, seated on the log behind me, once my teeth stopped chattering "You people are insane. Truly."

He laughed, nodding, "The cold isn't for everyone. You'll be use to it soon enough." he leaned in close, as if to tell me a secret, "If it makes you feel any better, I thought I was going to melt out of my skin those first few days at the High Courts. I thought my insides were shriveling inside me."

Oddly, it did make me feel better.

Cuyler's boot crunched on snow as he approached the fire, "Re-thinking the whiskey, Orihime?" He shook the bottle mockingly, "No one will think less of you if you cave in,"

Ryley was glaring enough for the both of us, and it sparked something in me, and so I held out my hand silently. Cuyler grinned wide, and Ryley just mumbled under his breath as the icey bottle, slightly warm from Cuylers touch, slid over my fingers.

I looked over the label once again, before glancing up at Cuyler. I held his eyes as I extended the bottle to Ryley behind me, he took it with only a few seconds hesitation. I raised a taunting brow at Cuyler, a dare to try and take it from him. But he only grinned, and raised his hands before him, "Don't come crying to me when he's puking all over your pretty fur coat."

I opened my mouth, to laugh, or to mock him further, before one of the soldiers, sitting across the fire said, "I thought you only share your private stash with pretty things, Cuyler."

The Northern heir shrugged at the man, "Inoue seems to want to freeze to death. And I won't be risking a fuzzy mind in these mountains as of right now, so I suppose someone might as well enjoy it," He gave a pointed look to his brother, "Even if he is disobeying his elders by doing so."

I clicked my tongue, "The elders are simply being overruled,"

Cuyler looked all animal in his smiling, "By you?"

"That's right,"

The man spoke up again, "But you won't drink it yourself?"

I stared at him through the flames between us, "I've never cared for the taste."

He scoffed, rubbing at his face, "You haven't had Northern whiskey then. It all tastes like piss in the West."

I rolled my eyes, "Piss is piss, no matter where it comes from."

"You should at least taste it before judging it." I looked at the man slowly, "Or before giving it to the kid to get sick on."

Ryley stood abruptly, the liquid splashing around in the bottle, I stared up at him, shadows construing his face from this angle, "I am not a child, and I can handle my damn liquor!"

A point he emphasised by popping the cork from the neck and chugging down three quick mouth fulls before Cuyler yanked the bottle off his mouth, with a hissed warning. Ryley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and there was a silence as we all waited.

He stumbled back half an inch before steadying himself, and I rose up onto my knees, in case he toppled towards the rising fire. Glancing at Cuyler I saw him eyeing the label of the bottle himself, his brows knitting together. And when I looked to Ryley again, he was lowering his hand from his mouth, his skin positively green.

Without warning his body began convulsing, eyes rolling. He plummeted backwards, head connecting with earth, snow flying up around his impact.

I was half to my feet, when a hand fisted itself into my hair and pulled me the remainder of the way up, a blade at my throat before I could bark even a word. Across the fire, Cuyler was already on the ground, his face looking nearly suffocated by snow as one of his soldiers pushed his boot into his back, a knife angled for his jugular.

On the outskirts of our camp, shadows rose from the snow. As one they wove through our tents, as one they circled the fire. Men and women, the ice still on them turning to mist on their thick white snowsuits.

The man leaned to whisper into my ear, "You should have just drank the fucking whiskey,"

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Wasting no time am I?

Let me know what you guys think, I appreciate any feedback!

Till next time-